....this could the one to break the Chinese economy, and adversely impact the commodity space.
....I feel the next downward wave in equities will commence shortly.
....while we can't envisage going into lockdowns again, at the very minimum, everyone should be encouraged to be responsible -i.e that they should wear mask when they have symptoms and get tested and isolate themselves. China’s New Covid Wave Set to See 65 Million Cases a Week
Infections set to rise as immunity from previous illness wanes
Country also set to roll out vaccines that target XBB strain
Bloomberg News
22 May 2023 at 5:22 pm AEST
China is likely to see its Covid-19 wave peaking at about 65 million infections a week toward the end of June, according to a senior health adviser, while authorities rush to bolster their vaccine arsenal to target the latest omicron variants.
XBB has been fueling a resurgence in cases across China since late April and is expected to result in 40 million infections a week by the end of May, before peaking at 65 million a month later, local media outlet the Paper reported Monday, citing a presentation by respiratory disease specialist Zhong Nanshan at a biotech conference in the southern city of Guangzhou.
His estimate provides rare insight into how the much anticipated second wave may play out, with immunity among the country’s 1.4 billion residents waning nearly six months after Beijing’s sudden dismantling of Covid Zero curbs saw coronavirus run rampant. In the wake of the pivot to living with the virus, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention stopped updating its weekly statistics earlier this month, leaving a question mark over Covid’s impact.
The 65-million-case estimate from disease modeling indicates the resurgence is likely to be more muted compared with the previous wave unleashed late last year and into January. Back then, a different omicron sublineage probably infected 37 million people every day, sending residents scrambling for limited supplies of fever medicine, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums.
China is also preparing to roll out new vaccines that will target XBB. The country’s drug regulator has already given preliminary approval to two and another three or four “will be cleared soon”, Zhong said. “We can lead the pack internationally in developing more effective vaccines.”
The batch of XBB-specific vaccines will also add to a growing number of homegrown immunizations Beijing has signed off throughout the pandemic, and is in line with a recommendation from an expert panel at the World Health Organization last week to move away from using the original Wuhan strain in future shots. WestVac Biopharma, a vaccine developer based in the western Chinese city of Chengdu, also got the go-ahead to start testing its XBB-based shots on human last week.
Covid Kills One Person Every Four Minutes as Vaccine Rates Fall
By Michelle Fay Cortez
24 May 2023 at 8:00 am AEST
After more than three years, the global Covid emergency is officially over. Yet it’s still killing at least one person every four minutes and questions on how to deal with the virus remain unanswered, putting vulnerable people and under-vaccinated countries at risk.
A key question is how to handle a virus that’s become less threatening to most but remains wildly dangerous to a slice of the population. That slice is much bigger than many realize: Covid is still a leading killer, the third-biggest in the US last year behind heart disease and cancer. Unlike with other common causes of death such as smoking and traffic accidents that led to safety laws, though, politicians aren’t pushing for ways to reduce the harm, such as mandated vaccinations or masking in closed spaces.
“The general desire in the world is to move beyond the pandemic and put Covid behind us, but we can’t put our heads in the sand,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri. “Covid still infects and kills a lot of people. We have the means to reduce that burden.”
Even before the World Health Organization declared earlier this month that Covid no longer constitutes an emergency, most governments had already relaxed lockdowns and guidelines. After spending heavily in earlier phases of the pandemic, global leaders have dialed back efforts and are reluctant to pursue preventative measures for which the public no longer has much patience.
Meanwhile, the infection that caused at least 20 million deaths worldwide continues to evolve, leaving the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions at the mercy of luck, uneven access to medicine and little protection from others without face masks or recent vaccinations. Why No Long-Term Plan?
A global, long-term plan to protect the vulnerable and to keep a resurgence at bay hasn’t materialized, partly because of how difficult it is to forge any consensus around Covid. From the start, polarized political discourse overshadowed official guidelines on masking and vaccinations.
Even in developed countries where the vaccine became available in less than a year into the pandemic, many people refused to take it. Lack of immunization led to more than 300,00 excess American deaths, or one out of every two from Covid, throughout 2021. Globally, it could have saved half a million more, studies show.
“We know that politicizing public health is one of the tragedies of the pandemic,” Al-Aly said. “Political leaders leveraged their responses not only to advance public health but to advance their own narrative and drum up support for themselves.”
Global coordination has also been hampered by politics. China’s refusal to allow independent experts unfettered access to a wet market thought to be a crucible for Covid or to the Wuhan Institute of Virology added to diplomatic tension and mistrust. Today, Chinese representatives aren’t participating in many global preparation efforts, said Linfa Wang, a virologist and director of the emerging infectious diseases program at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.
“It’s hindering academic collaboration, and China/US collaboration is almost zero,” Wang said. “With these two superpowers, if they don’t collaborate, how can we say the world is ready for the next disease?”
A waning sense of emergency has also meant the surge of investment in Covid vaccines and therapeutics has also cooled. While companies including Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc are still updating their shots, trying to make them easier to manufacture and store, many of the hundreds of novel approaches that were initially conceived have fallen by the wayside.
In the US, experts are due to meet in June to advise on what strain of the virus vaccines should target for the remainder of the year. Those vaccines will only launch in the fall, with just 100 million doses expected in the US according to Moderna’s estimates, far less than in previous years. Why Is This a Problem?
Long Covid, estimated to affect around 10% of infected people, is considered one of the biggest post-pandemic medical challenges. The economic costs are also significant.
In the US, long Covid was estimated to cost around $50 billion a year in lost salaries as of late 2022. In the UK, the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year estimated that about one in 10 people with long Covid have to stop working as a result. The number of people with those symptoms, including brain fog, breathing difficulties and fatigue, are rising even as infections are decreasing.
It’s particularly scary for high-risk people, who’ve had to return to work and public spaces where masks are sparse and the dangers are invisible. A family wedding can still turn into a super-spreader event, and a flight can be catastrophic. Long Covid Prevalence in the UK
The number of people reporting symptoms lasting a year or more has climbed even as the overall incidence has declined
Source: Office for National Statistics, UK
Note: People living in private households
Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee is painfully aware of this. Her husband Tom survived a drug-resistant infection with a rare superbug in 2016, but was left with scarred lungs and other medical issues. They understood the potential risk if he contracted Covid, so they were vigilant, limiting travel through the pandemic. Both were fully vaccinated and avid maskers.
But a recent visit to their son in Canada led to an infection. In the hospital, where Tom was treated with acute respiratory distress, she was taken aback by how cavalier some younger staff were about contracting Covid as they considered themselves low-risk, even though they could transmit it to patients.
“It’s not mild for everybody and we know repeated exposures increase your risk,” said Strathdee, also associate dean of Global Health Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.
While people with active health issues may know to take precautions, some will learn that they’re vulnerable only after an infection lands them in the hospital. Repeated bouts can add to damage, and that applies to everyone, not just those with pre-existing conditions. What Should We Be Doing?
The silver lining is that the world now has vaccines and better treatments. Tests can uncover infections in minutes, and new outbreaks can be quickly spotted.
Health experts say immunization is the best way to protect against it. Only about 16% of Americans have gotten a bivalent booster, according to Pfizer Inc., compared with almost 70% vaccinated in the first inoculation drive. Increased out-of-pocket costs and vaccine fatigue could cause uptake rates to fall further. Longer term, the hope is that innovative new shots or nasal sprays will provide better protection.
There are other improvements that could help, ranging from ventilation and air quality testing to better masks. There needs to be more investment in surveillance systems so threats can be caught early, experts said.
The US is also planning to spend $5 billion on a new project aimed at developing advanced vaccines and treatments for coronaviruses in concert with drugmakers. The goal is to make medicines available quickly as the virus mutates, so the targeted strain isn’t ebbing when they hit the market.
“Even if governments are tired, we have to face the reality that the virus is still evolving,” said Duke-NUS’s Wang.
